Finally, the banquet ended, and the waiters came out with bushel baskets, spread out, and swept the tables clean of glasses and dishes, dumping it all noisily into the baskets. What went into the baskets was perfectly usable dinnerware; what they carried away were shards of glass and pieces of ceramic. A dozen or so crack troops ran in to lend a hand, each grabbing a tablecloth, folding it up, and running off with it. Then the waiters returned to spread out fresh tablecloths, on top of which they laid out grapes and cucumbers, watermelons and pears from Hebei; there was also something called Brazilian coffee, which was the color of sweet potatoes and gave off a strange odor – one pot after another, more than I could count. Then one cup after another, also more than I could count. The guests, still belching from all the food, came out to sit down again and take some tentative sips of the Brazilian coffee, as if it were some sort of Chinese medicine.
The soldiers carried in a rectangular table on which they placed a machine that was covered by a piece of red cloth.
Sima Ku clapped his hands and announced loudly, “The movie will begin in a few minutes. Let’s welcome Mr. Babbitt, who will show us something special.”
Babbitt stood up amid thunderous applause and bowed to the crowd. He then walked up to the table and removed the red cloth to reveal a mysterious, demonic machine. His fingers moved skillfully amid a bunch of wheels, big and small, until a rumbling noise emerged from the bowels of the machine. A beam of light knifed through the air and landed on the west wall of the church. It was met by a roar of approval, which was followed by the noise of stools being dragged across the floor. People turned to follow the light. At first it landed on the carved face of Jesus on the jujube cross that had recently been dug up and re-nailed to the wall. The features of the holy icon were unrecognizable. A yellow medicinal pore fungus called lingzhi now grew where the eyes had once been. As a devout Christian, Babbitt had insisted that the wedding take place in the church. During the day, the Lord had watched over the marriage rites for him and Niandi with pore-fungus eyes; now when night had fallen, he illuminated the Lord’s eyes with an electric light, covering the pore fungus with a white mist. The beam of light began to descend, from Jesus’ face to His chest, and from there to His abdomen, to His lower parts, which the Chinese woodcarver had covered with a lotus leaf, and down to the tips of His toes. Finally, the beam settled on a rectangular sheet of white cloth with wide black borders that hung on the gray wall. It was adjusted until it fit within the black borders, then shifted a bit more before holding steady. At that moment I heard the machine make a sound like rainwater cascading down from eaves.
“Turn off the lamps!” Babbitt shouted.
With a pop, the lamps hanging from the rafters went out, and we were thrown into darkness. But the beam of light from Babbitt’s demonic machine intensified. Clusters of little white insects danced in the air and a white moth flitted erratically in the center of the beam, its shape suddenly magnified several times its original size against the white sheet. I heard cries of delight from the crowd; even I gasped. And there, in front of my eyes, were the electric images. Suddenly, a head appeared in the shaft of light. It belonged to Sima Ku. The light shone through his earlobes, in which the flow of blood was visible to us all. His head moved as he turned to face the spot where the light was coming from. His face flattened out and turned white as a sheet of paper, while blocking out a big section of the screen. Loud cries emerged from the darkness.
“Sit down!” Babbitt shouted irately, as a delicate white hand was thrust into the beam of light. Sima Ku’s head sank beneath the light. The wall made a series of popping sounds, as dark specks flickered on the screen – the sight and sound of gunshots. Music then burst from a sound box hanging next to the screen. It sounded a little like a string instrument, the huqin, and a little like a wind instrument, the suona, but not exactly like either. It was thin and tinny, like mung bean noodles being squeezed through the holes of a sieve.
Some white, squiggly words appeared on the screen, several lines of them, some big and some small, rising from the bottom. More shouts from the crowd. Water, it’s said, always flows downward, but these foreign words flowed in the opposite direction, disappearing into the blackness of the wall when they reached the top of the screen. A crazy thought popped into my head: Would they be found embedded in the church wall tomorrow morning? Water then appeared on the screen, flowing down a riverbed bordered by trees, noisy birds hopping around on the branches. Our mouths fell open in amazement; we forgot to shout. The next scene was of a man with a rifle slung over his back, his open-front shirt revealing a hairy chest. A cigarette dangled from his lips, smoke curling upward from the tip and streaming out from his nostrils. My god, what a sight! A black bear lumbered out from a stand of trees and went straight for the man. Shrieks from women and the sound of a pistol being cocked erupted in the church. The silhouette of a man burst into the beam of light. Sima Ku again. Revolver in hand. He had intended to shoot the bear, but its image on the screen behind him was shattered.
“Sit down, you damned fool!” Babbitt shouted. “Sit down! It’s a movie!”
Sima Ku sat back down, but by then the bear already lay dead on the screen, a stream of green blood seeping from its chest. The hunter was sitting on the ground beside it, reloading.
“Son of a bitch!” Sima Ku shouted. “What a marksman!”
The man on the screen looked up, muttered something I couldn’t understand, and then smiled contemptuously. Slinging his rifle over his back again, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle, which echoed in the church. A horse-drawn wagon rumbled up along the riverbank. The horse had a proud, defiant look, but in a sort of stupid way. Its harness looked familiar, as if I’d seen it somewhere. A woman stood in the wagon behind the shaft, her long hair tossing in the wind; I couldn’t tell what color it was. She had a big face, a jutting forehead, gorgeous eyes, and curled lashes as black and bristly as a cat’s whiskers. Her mouth was enormous, her lips black and shiny. She looked immoral to me. Her breasts bounced and jiggled like crazy, like a pair of white rabbits caught by the tail. They were much bigger and fuller than any in the Shangguan family. She drove the wagon straight toward me at a gallop; my heart lurched, my lips tingled, my palms were sweaty. I jumped to my feet, but was pushed back down on the bench by a powerful hand on my head. I turned to look. The man’s mouth was wide open; I didn’t recognize him. The area behind him was packed with people, some even blocking the door. Others seemed to be hanging on the doorframe. Out in the street, people clamored to squeeze in.
The woman reined the horse in and jumped down off the wagon. She picked up the hem of her dress, exposing her milky white legs, and shouted, to the man, that I could tell. Then she took off running, still shouting. Sure enough, she was shouting at him. Ignoring the dead bear, he took his rifle off his back, threw it to the ground, and ran toward the woman. Her face, her eyes, her mouth, her white teeth, her heaving breasts. Then the face of the man, bushy eyebrows, eyes like a hawk, a glistening beard, and a shiny scar that separated his brow from his temple. Back to the woman’s face. Then back to the man’s. The woman’s feet as she flicked off her shoes. The man’s clumsy feet. The woman ran into the man’s arms. Her breasts were flattened. She attacked the man’s face with her large mouth. His mouth clamped over hers. Then, your mouth is outside, mine is inside. Two mouths coupling. Moans and chirps, all from the woman. Then their arms, draped around a neck or wrapped around a waist. The hands began to roam, over me, over you, until finally the two of them fell to the grassy carpet and began to writhe and tumble, the man on top one minute, the woman on top the next. They rolled around, over and over, for quite some distance, and then stopped. The man’s hairy hand slipped under the woman’s dress and grabbed one of her full breasts. My poor heart was being torn apart, and hot tears spilled out of my eyes.